


you said a long, long time ago

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-26
Updated: 2015-07-26
Packaged: 2018-04-11 08:57:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4429259
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena is curled up in the chair, knees folded to her chest, eyes wide and open and watching you. She is pale, and dressed in your jacket and her dark dark jeans she looks like the ghost of yesterday’s arson. She is so pale. Her eyes are so wide. Siobhan always locks the door. You open your mouth to scream.</p><p>(Canon divergence from "Entangled Bank": Helena follows Kira's letter to Siobhan's house after Kira has already gone to bed.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	you said a long, long time ago

You wake up sharp and sudden as a broken bone on S’s couch; you don’t remember falling asleep, but there’s drool crusted on the side of your face and a blanket that’s been drawn over you with some tender and threadbare sort of love. The memories you do have are scattered, sharp – so much has happened, in so few days. You remember the bloom of blood on Katja’s forehead and the blank look of surprise on her face. You remember the way Olivier had loomed over you, smelling like cheap aftershave and formaldehyde. You remember. You try not to remember. It doesn’t matter.

But you’re awake, now, and memories are shedding like feathers and you are groggy, disoriented. Why are you awake?

Something shifts in the chair next to the couch. You blink awake sleep-tired eyes. In the split second before a scream, you see:

Helena, curled up in the chair, knees folded to her chest, eyes wide and open and watching you. She is pale, and dressed in your jacket and her dark dark jeans she looks like the ghost of yesterday’s arson. She is so pale. Her eyes are so wide. Siobhan always locks the door. You open your mouth to scream.

Before you can she’s across the room, hand clapped over your mouth, the cold metal of that damn fish blade pressed to your throat. She says: _sshhhh_ , slow and soft and tender. You remember her hands around your throat. Sssshhhh.

You blink, you nod in frantic bobs of your head: _I’ll be quiet, take the knife away_. She does. She’s crouching next to the couch, now, and she watches you like you are the best thing to ever have been made.

“Hello,” she says, and: “Sarah.”

“Helena, what are you doing here,” you hiss, trying to sound threatening and mostly sounding terrified. With a dull horror you watch her right hand knot into the blanket, the tips of her fingers brushing gently over your thigh as she does.

“I followed you,” she says. Her head tilts to the side, slow. “I-miss-you-Mummy. One-forty-eight.”

She reaches into her pocket with her right hand (her left hand is still holding the knife, and the edge of it is stained with something red, and you are going to throw up, and you do not throw up) and pulls out an envelope. Shoves it at you until you take it.

Kira’s face, and Kira’s words, and Kira’s envelope. Your heart gives a great surge of fear and adrenaline in your throat. You gave her the bloody jacket with Kira’s bloody letter still in it and she followed it all the way here. To you.

She could have hurt Kira. She could have—

There are knuckles brushing along your cheek, back and forth, and Helena is watching you with curiosity.

“You’re shaking,” she says, with the bright interest of a child. “I’m not going to hurt you. Sarah.”

“Yeah, sure seems like it,” you say. You look at her knuckles; you look at the knife.

“Tomas says I should kill you,” she says over you. “He says you are not different. But you are different. Sarah.” Her knuckles are still brushing back and forth over your cheek and you are shuddering, just a little. You are shuddering because it is sick and you are shuddering because there is a part of you that is starting to unwind, just a little. There is a part of you that is comforted by this.

“I don’t want to kill you,” she whispers. Like confession.

“Then don’t.”

“I have to,” she says – the words are gossamer and cobweb, they’re so thin. “If I don’t kill you, he will put me in the cage again. And Pupok will tell me to be strong and Tomas will tell me to not be weak and then I will kill you. I don’t have a choice.”

You start, slowly, trying to sit up. Helena lets you. She’s watching you with desperate fervor, waiting for you to fix this. Her thumb smoothes back and forth along the curve of the fish’s head. The silver of the knife blade winks at you in the dark, one silver eye.

“There’s always a choice,” you say, once you’re sitting up. “You don’t have to listen to – Tomas, yeah? I know – I know sometimes it’s hard, when the people love – hurt you, or want to make you do awful things.” You pause, you remember, you whisper: “I know it’s hard.”

Helena’s kneeled on the ground in front of you, brow furrowed in concentration. When you finish her eyes flick up to you, a silent question; before you even know what that question is she has slowly, slowly, inched onto the couch next to you. Her shoulder presses against your own. The heat of it is feverish. You watch her hand on the knife.

“Tomas loves me,” she whispers. Slow. Slower: “But I love you.”

 _You don’t_ , that’s your first thought. _You don’t know how_ is the second, the last syllables dripping in slow like honey. Your third and fourth and fifth thoughts bang together like pots and pans in your mind and so you sit there and stay silent. Helena’s shoulder is pressed greedily against your own, like she’ll suck the life from you if she just leans hard enough.

“Do you hate me?” she asks, a whisper that cracks down the middle partway through.

“No,” you say, your voice equally shattered. No. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard, Helena, but I can’t.

“Do you love me?”

The two of you breathe, for a moment.

“No.”

“Tomas would have said yes,” she whispers.

“I’m not Tomas.”

“I know,” she says. “You let me live.” There’s pressure on your shoulder and then her head is there, slow until it settles there with a heavy weight. You hold very very still, think about how her knife could find your liver. Her nose nudges against your collarbone. She sighs. Abruptly, you feel like crying. There is a woman sitting next to you on the couch where you used to do your math homework, and this woman has your face, and she has just told you that she loves you. Her left hand is holding a knife. Her right hand is on her leg.

Very deliberately not thinking, you reach out and cover her hand with your own. You think: _ssshhh_ , the way the sound is like hands around your throat.

Helena shudders, a short sharp burst, and then her hand has flipped and her fingers are laced urgently with your own. One or both of your hands are sweating and Helena is warm, warm, warm like a fever. The air only smells like you, old sweat and worn-out leather and Beth’s shampoo. You have no idea what Helena smells like. You don’t understand why this makes you want to cry.

“ _Ya by vbyty za tebe_ ,” Helena mutters into your shoulder, and: “ _Ya by umer za tebe_.” You open your mouth to ask her what that means, but you realize with something between shock and horror that she’s fallen asleep – right there, her face tucked trustingly against your neck like a child’s and her hand laced with your own. You hold your breath. You reach across awkwardly with your right hand, over the tangle of your hands on Helena’s thigh. Slowly, carefully, you pull the knife from her hand and shove it into the space between couch cushions where it’s out of her reach.

You sit there, numb and dull. Helena wheezes against your shoulder; every now and then she twitches, but mostly she is so very still. You don’t know what you’re going to do. You have no idea what you’re going to do. Siobhan’s going to come downstairs soon. Worse than that: Kira’s going to come downstairs soon, and you don’t know what you’re going to do. You’re so tired.

Slowly your head falls, the weight of gravity pulling it to rest on top of Helena’s own. There is only a thin layer of skin and bone between your mind and hers – and yet. And yet.

You sit there, mindlessly staring out the window, and the two of you together wait for the sun to rise.

**Author's Note:**

> You said a long, long time ago  
> you were happy being someone  
> Let's go far, far, far from home  
> I'll be glad to be with someone
> 
> Land pneumonia, your engines in repair;  
> plant begonias, and orchids in your hair.  
> Continents all made of clay  
> Dreamers leaving every day  
> To islands on the sea,  
> lands I’ve never seen,  
> things will get calmer—follow me.  
> \--"North By North," Faded Paper Figures
> 
> Helena says _I would kill for you_ and _I would die for you_ , respectively. 
> 
> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you liked, it means a lot. :)


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